New York City rats are not your average rats. They’re sophisticated. They’re worldly. Evidently, according to new research, they are great conversationalists who love socializing, as demonstrated by their active night lives.
Researchers recorded rats at parks, sidewalks, and subway stations, picking up not just their movements but their unheard high-frequency chatter. Turns out, rats have an entire social language we can’t hear, kind of like dolphins, but not as majestic.
Let’s be honest, their conversations are probably about different kinds of trash.
In a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, neuroscientist Emily Mackevicius states that NYC rats are actually incredibly loud talkers; we just can’t hear them. “There was an ambulance going by, and you could look at that in the spectrogram, and the rat vocalizations were louder than the ambulance,” Mackevicius told Scientific American.
They have also developed some complex social structures with well-defined roles. For instance, if you ever see a big rat by itself, the team’s research suggests that fat boy might be a kind of urban scout sent out to map food sources and report back to the colony.
Scientists Say New York’s Rats Are Talking to Each Other in a Unique Language
These rats are specifically Rattus norvegicus. Those are the brown rats that booted out black rats back in the 1700s and have since genetically adapted to New York’s concrete jungle. After 500 generations, their heads are different, their brains are sharper, and their behavior is tailored for navigating the diverse dangers of big cities.
They’re just as well-suited for snagging an improperly discarded pizza crust… we all remember pizza rat.
Thermal footage showed young rats moving in groups, still figuring it out, while veterans alone with purpose. One rat in particular observed by the team even appeared to play dead after a train passed, which feels kind of creepily advanced.
But also: the train doesn’t care if you’re dead or not. So, if it was playing dead, was it doing it in response to the train, or was it cleverly using the train as an excuse to play dead because it knew the researchers were observing it?
The funniest part of the whole study has nothing to do with the rats themselves, but how New Yorkers Mackevicius and the team encountered along the way volunteered rat-hunting advice. Friends and random passersby would offer tips, rat stories, and even suspected rat locations as soon as they learned about their research.
“Oh, if you want to see rats, come to this place. I see them. They’re as big as cats. They do this. They do that. They chew through steel,” Mackevicius said. The rat scientists aren’t the only rat experts in town. It’s New York City—there’s a rat expert on every corner.
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